A 29-year-old man who helped cover up a 2008 Bergenfield homicide to make it appear to be a suicide died in the early morning hours on Sunday when the car he was driving crashed into a telephone pole, according to the police and court records.

Anthony Sgobbo, of Hackensack, apparently lost control of his car on New Bridge Road in Teaneck at about 1 a.m. in what may have been a weather-related accident caused by wet roads, the police said. A passenger in the car, a 25-year-old man from Bergenfield, was not injured, said Detective Lt. Andrew McGurr of the Teaneck police.

McGurr said that the driver and the passenger had to be cut out of the car, and Sgobbo was pronounced dead later at Hackensack University Medical Center.

In 2009, Sgobbo admitted that he helped cover up a shooting that occurred at his mother’s house on March 31, 2008, when one his friends, Joseph O’Connor, playing with a handgun, shot another of his friends, 21-year-old Krystal West. His mother Kathleen Sgobbo, also admitted to having a role in the cover up.

O’Connor later was convicted of aggravated manslaughter and is serving a 13-year sentence in state prison, according to prison records. The authorities said he was playing with a gun that had been kept in the home when he shot West in the head. He then placed the gun in West’s hand to make it appear that she shot herself and fled the scene with Anthony Sgobbo, they said. Kathleen Sgobbo, they said, waited until the next day to call the police.

Anthony Sgobbo spent 18 months in state prison on a third-degree charge of hindering apprehension before being released in November 2011, according to prison records. His mother pleaded guilty to a disorderly persons charge of hindering apprehension, according to a 2009 news report.

At the time of the shooting, Anthony Sgobbo and O’Connor were living in Middlesex County. They were visiting Kathleen Sgobbo’s home and were later joined by West, who lived in Bergenfield.

In March 2011, when O’Connor was sentenced, West’s mother, Carla Thompson, said in court that she went to sleep every night with a box of her daughter’s ashes. “I see her in my dreams,” she said. Thompson did not respond to an interview request Monday.

Anthony Sgobbo’s family did not respond to requests for an interview, although one woman who knew him said he was “always very kind.”

O’Connor, at his sentencing, told the judge that he hadn’t meant to hurt West.

“I can’t put it into words,” he said. “Everything I did was wrong that day. I never meant to hurt anybody. I am truly sorry. I truly am.”

The judge, Liliana S. DeAvila-Silebi, angrily scolded O’Connor for conspiring to lead authorities to believe that West committed suicide instead of immediately calling an ambulance, calling the actions “heinous and cruel, not only to Krystal but to her entire family.”